And What Does That Say About His Supporters?
Señor T’s imaginary and frightening world was Ashley Parker’s topic yesterday. Good title for a Netflix mini-series. In his “imaginary world,” she wrote, “Americans can’t venture out to buy a loaf of bread without getting shot, mugged or raped. Immigrants in a small Ohio town eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. World War III and economic collapse are just around the corner. And kids head off to school only to return at day’s end having undergone gender reassignment surgery. The former president’s imaginary world is a dark, dystopian place, described by Trump in his rallies, interviews, social media posts and debate appearances to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration. It is a distorted, warped and, at times, absurdist portrait of a nation where the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to deadly effect were merely peaceful protesters, and where unlucky boaters are faced with the unappealing choice between electrocution or a shark attack. His extreme caricatures also serve as another way for Trump to traffic in lies and misinformation, using an alternate reality of his own making to create an often terrifying— and, he seems to hope— politically devastating landscape for his political opponents.”
The implications offer article is that Trump is not psychologically fit to be president. Is that news to you? After all, we’d like the leader of our country able to exhibit sound judgment, emotional stability and the ability to discern fact from fiction— traits that Trump lacks. His detachment from reality, frequent use of paranoid and fear-based rhetoric and persistent lying indicate that he doesn’tpossess the mental clarity or emotional stability necessary for the Oval Office. After Psych 101 and 102 classes in 1965, I can say without hesitation that there are clear signs of paranoia, narcissism, and delusional thinking in this man.
“Trump for instance,” continued Parker, “regularly claims that Democrats favor abortions up until the day of birth— and, in some cases, even after birth. Speaking at the Sept. 10 presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Trump falsely claimed that Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has said ‘abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine… He also says, execution after birth— execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born— is okay,’ Trump continued. In fact, Walz has not said this, the Washington Post Fact Checker found, and ‘execution after birth’— or infanticide— is illegal in all states. According to the Centers for Disease Prevention, in 2021, nearly all abortions— 93.5 percent— occur at or before 13 weeks, and fewer than 1 percent were performed after 21 weeks.”
“He’s not the same candidate he was in 2016 or 2020,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who took note of Trump’s “imaginary world” in a post on Twitter this month.“He’s far more diminished and untethered.”
“The percentage of time he’s spending in the real world versus his dystopian world is decreasing. He’s just not speaking about things that are true in this world that we all live in,” Rosenberg said.
…Among Trump’s supporters, some seem to accept his false claims as unassailable truths, while others say he sometimes exaggerates— but in doing so accurately captures their fears about real issues facing the nation.
“I don’t think he does stretch the truth,” said Trump supporter Marelee Ernestberg, 59, as she defended some of his more extreme falsehoods, including his baseless claim about Haitian migrants eating pets, which she called “an absolute truth” that did not surprise her. “Trump is not a liar.”
Speaking at her first Trump rally in Las Vegas earlier this month, Ernestberg pivoted when discussing Trump’s claim that children are being given gender reassignment surgeries in school— and said that she does not care about the list of falsehoods.
…It is also a continuation of Trump’s perpetual lying and obfuscating; in Trump’s presidency alone, an analysis by The Post’s Fact Checker found that he made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims— an average of about 21 untruths per day.
Señor T’s firehose of lies and distortions demonstrate two things:
A continued attempt to gaslight and mislead voters
A worrying departure from reality
Put them together and you get delusional thinking that’s not just dangerous because it misinforms the public but also because it highlights a diminished capacity to assess facts and differentiate between reality and fantasy. Such thinking in a leader raises the risk of impulsive or irrational decision-making, particularly in high-stakes situations like foreign policy, where clear-headedness is crucial. It’s equally worrying that polls show that as many as 45% of likely voters plan to vote for him. And in less educated states, that rises to over 50%.
His dystopian portrayal of America as a dangerous, crime-ridden place where people can't even go to the store without being assaulted, and his constant warnings of World War III, are onbioulsy designed to stoke fear. This kind of fear-mongering, especially when not based on reality, as in this case, reflects traits of paranoia. Paranoid leaders— think of King Saul, Nero, Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, and more recently Stalin, Joe McCarthy, Nixon— often make decisions based on exaggerated threats or personal grievances, which could lead to destabilizing policies both domestically and internationally. Trump’s demonization of immigrants, comparing them to Hannibal Lecter or suggesting they are taking over buildings with weapons, plays into these paranoid tendencies.
A common thread among paranoid leaders is their detachment from reality and tendency to make decisions based on imagined threats or exaggerated fears, even mistrusting their advisors and closest allies, which leads to isolation and bad decision-making and erratic governance. Paranoid leaders have been known to launch preemptive strikes and mass purges and to create oppressive surveillance states. In light of Trump’s statements, his consistent focus on exaggerated and dystopian claims, makes it clear to non-MAGAts that we’re dealing with a dangerous level of detachment from the real world— behavior mirroring the patterns seen in historical paranoid leaders, where personal grievances and imagined threats lead to destabilizing rhetoric and disastrous policy decisions. That was certainly something that went into the announcement over the weekend that more than 700 national security officials, including former secretaries of state and secretaries of defense, former ambassadors and retired generals, both Republicans and Democrats, signed a letter backing Kamala.
As we’ve talked about endlessly, Trump's self-description as the only person who can “stop World War III” and restore peace reflects a sense of grandiosity, associated with narcissistic personality traits. Leaders with extreme narcissism prioritize their self-image over the well-being of the nation, making decisions that serve their ego rather than the collective good. His characterization of himself as a “Peace President,” despite escalating global tensions during his tenure, also reflects a disconnection between his self-perception and reality.
His lifelong habit— acerbated by the Roy Cohn tutelage— of making baseless claims, which he refuses to retract even when confronted with evidence to the contrary suggests a refusal to engage with factual information, which is essential for effective governance. The fact that Trump's supporters, like Marelee Ernestberg, accept or downplay his lies shows the dangerous impact this type of thinking can have on public trust and democracy. Trump’s emotional manipulation of moron’s like her— “We love the poorly educated”— deepens societal divisions and creates a climate of irrational fear, which is toxic for democracy.
The most famous example of paranoia in American politics— and one directly connected to Trump though his mentor, Cohn— is Joseph McCarthy and his role in the 1950s Red Scare. McCarthy exploited post-World War II fears of communism to launch a witch hunt against alleged “communist sympathizers” within the U.S. government and society. His claims were baseless, but his paranoia and demagoguery led to widespread fear and suspicion, ruining countless careers and lives. The term “McCarthyism” became synonymous with reckless accusations and guilt by association and his actions created a climate of fear and repression in American political and cultural life until his eventual censure by the Senate in 1954 and his death at age 48 from untreated alcoholism.
Comments